I would like to know how to overclock my motherboard?

Question

Motherboard is a MSI 661FM series (MS-6540G) with a Celeron processor running at 2.0 GHz.

Answer 1

There are a few ways to overclock, depending on the motherboard. You can increase the voltage to the cpu which forces it to work faster (not a good idea), change the bus speed, change the mhz rating, etc. In your case I would suggest looking for a replacement chip that will work in your socket (not a celeron). This will give you a bit more processor speed and a larger cache. whatever you do remember to increase your cooling - a new cpu fan plus an additional case fan would be a good idea.
Note - I would guess that your 2.0 celeron would be about equal to a 1.4 P4 (remember - this is a guess, I haven't actually measured it) so a 1.8 P4, even though it sounds slower, would give you better performance. If you have on-board video you can enhance your system even more with a separate video card.

Answer 2

If the board allows to overclock, there is a setting in your BIOS that allows this. You go into the BIOS and look for the processor settings, you can there change the speed on how fast you want your processor to work. I did this to an older machine and it worked pretty well. I do warn you though, because if you overclock your motherboard, you reduce the life of your processor over time.

Answer 3

To the best of my knowledge, older Celeron Processors DON'T have thermal throttling and shutdown. That means that if you overclock, the CPU gets hotter. If it doesn't get cooled adequately, it can smoke, because it doesn't have the built in protection to save itself. Ya MIGHT want to read this first:

http://www.elitebastards.com/page.php?pageid=6387&head=1&comments=1